Vim file navigation

Question

An easy way to browse the file system is the command:

:Sex

I'm not making this up :)

I don't find drilling down into subdirectories via plain old :e to be that cumbersome given a decent configuration for tab-completion.

Look into the 'wildmenu' option to have Vim show a list of completions (filenames) in the modeline above the commandline. You can change the 'wildmode' option to further configure the kind of tab-completion Vim will do.

Personally I use :set wildmode=full.

My workflow is like this:

1. :cd into the toplevel directory of my project.

2. To open file foo/bar/baz:

   • Simplest scenario: type :e f<tab>b<tab>b<tab><enter>.

   • If there are more than one file starting with b in one of those directories you might have to do a <left> or <right> or another <tab> on the keyboard to jump between them (or type a few more letters to disambiguate).

   • Worst-case scenario there are files and directories that share a name and you need to drill down into the directory. In this case tab-complete the directory name and then type *<tab> to drill down.

3. Open 2 or 3 windows and open files in all of them as needed.
4. Once a file is open in a buffer, don't kill the buffer. Leave it open in the background when you open new files. Just :e a new file in the same window.
5. Then, use :b <tab> to cycle through buffers that are already open in the background. If you type :b foo<tab> it will match only against currently-open files that match foo.

I also use these mappings to make it easier to open new windows and to jump between them because it's something I do so often.

" Window movements; I do this often enough to warrant using up M-arrows on this"
nnoremap <M-Right> <C-W><Right>
nnoremap <M-Left> <C-W><Left>
nnoremap <M-Up> <C-W><Up>
nnoremap <M-Down> <C-W><Down>

" Open window below instead of above"
nnoremap <C-W>N :let sb=&sb<BAR>set sb<BAR>new<BAR>let &sb=sb<CR>

" Vertical equivalent of C-w-n and C-w-N"
nnoremap <C-w>v :vnew<CR>
nnoremap <C-w>V :let spr=&spr<BAR>set nospr<BAR>vnew<BAR>let &spr=spr<CR>

" I open new windows to warrant using up C-M-arrows on this"
nmap <C-M-Up> <C-w>n
nmap <C-M-Down> <C-w>N
nmap <C-M-Right> <C-w>v
nmap <C-M-Left> <C-w>V

It takes me a matter of seconds to open Vim, set up some windows and open a few files in them. Personally I have never found any of the third-party file-browsing scripts to be very useful.

:Sex,:Vex, :Tex and :Ex are all useful commands for ex(ploring) the files on your system if you want to use something different from :e

(where S/V/T are short for Split/Vertical/Tab)

If you haven't found them already, you might want to check out:

• the original fuzzy finder plugin -- which IIRC doesn't have the Ruby binding issues
• the Project plugin -- similar to NERDTree
• the buffer explorer plugin -- shows a list of open buffers

Also bear in mind that you can remap key shortcuts in your .vimrc to make them less cumbersome. I do use split windows a lot; I've found the following make dealing with them much easier:

" set your own personal modifier key to something handy
let mapleader = "," 

" use ,v to make a new vertical split, ,s for horiz, ,x to close a split
noremap <leader>v <c-w>v<c-w>l
noremap <leader>s <c-w>s<c-w>j
noremap <leader>x <c-w>c

" use ctrl-h/j/k/l to switch between splits
map <c-j> <c-w>j
map <c-k> <c-w>k
map <c-l> <c-w>l
map <c-h> <c-w>h

I think I would do better with tabs I can easily toggle between, but maybe I need to use a different workflow.

Are you aware of Vim's tabs? Not sure if you were referring to Vim's own tabs there, or pining for TextMate's. It's unclear what Vim version you're using but it's had tabs since at least 7.0 (which seems to be installed everywhere I look lately), and they're awesome.

:tabe opens a new one (short for "tab edit", so e.g. :tabe for empty or :tabe path/to/file for opening a file in a new tab,) you can move between adjacent tabs with gt/gT, and there's a bunch of other tab-related nav commands too, as you might expect from Vim (:help tabs)

My workflow for large projects tends to involve a bunch of tabs, each with between 1 and 3 windows depending on what sort of context I need. This works even better if I have a doublewide terminal window since I can vertically split with :vs, so then a single tab can easily show me 4 files at once with plenty of room for each.

Final tip: I sometimes use the "switch buffer" command (:sb <partial_buf_name>) which is sorta-kinda like TM's fuzzy finding, in that it works pretty well but only for already-open buffers. Still great for when I have a dozen or more files open at once. (N.B. I needed to :set switchbuf=usetab in my vimrc for this to work across tabs, but once that's set it's great.)